Eudora Welty

Writer

Born: 13 April 1909

Died: 23 July 2001 (complications from pneumonia)

Birthplace: Jackson, Mississippi

Best known as: Author of Delta Wedding

Eudora Welty lived her life in Jackson, Mississippi and became famous for her stories from the heart of the American South. Her early stories and essays were published in the New Yorker and other magazines, and her first book of collected stories, A Curtain of Green (1941), put her on the literary map. Her books include the novella The Robber Bridegroom (1942) and the novels Delta Wedding (1946) and The Ponder Heart (1954). By the time she won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her novel The Optimist's Daughter, Welty had become a beloved grande dame of American letters. Her autobiographical book One Writer's Beginnings was published in 1984.

Extra credit: Welty never married and lived nearly her whole life in the family home in which she grew up... The popular e-mail program Eudora was named for Welty by its creator, Steve Dorner... Welty was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 1996.